55 



By referring to the annual report of the Director of the Colonial 

 Bacteriological Institute of the Cape of. Good Hope for 1898 it will 

 be learned that the much-advertised South African locust fungus has 

 l)een determined b}^ the working force of that institution to be an 

 Empusa; and the name Em.pma acridii has been suggested for it since 

 it was reported to have attacked other species than the red locust 

 {Acndium^nirjnirifenini Walk.), one of the chief destructive species 

 of that section. Plates I, II, and III, which are photographic repro- 

 ductions accompanying that report, show these locusts as they appear 

 upon the vegetation after death caused by the fungus. Judging from 

 what is known concerning the actions of insects after having ))een 

 attacked by ditferent fungi, a person who is conversant with the sub- 

 ject would at once pronounce the malady portraj-^ed here to be that 

 resulting from the presence of an Empusa. To verify this conclusion 

 in part we have the following records: Mr. Charles P. Lounsbury, 

 government entomologist, in the Agricultural Journal of the Cape of 

 Good Hope, February 2, 1899, says that the disease is apparently 

 identical with Enqjusa (jrylU^ and quotes as authority for this state- 

 ment Dr. Schonland and Dr. Black, of the Bacteriological Institute of 

 Natal. Also Dr. Munro, in his book on the Locust Plague (p. 182), 

 quotes from a Mr. Evans as follows: 



On the 4th of this month I wrote a letter stating that a fungus had been found in a 

 locust causing its death, and it was afterwards determined by Mr. George Murray, 

 F. L. S., head of the botanical department of the British Museum, as Empusa gryUi. 



While the insects in question have apparently died as a result of the 

 presence of an P^mpusa, an entirely ditferent fungus appears to have 

 been isolated from the dead locusts and afterwards grown in quantity 

 and sent out from the laboratorj^ to be utilized in fighting the same 

 pests. In this report, referred to above, we find a description and 

 illustrations of a fungus which in no wise resembles or approaches 

 Empusa. In fact, both the descriptions and figures suggest a Mucor 

 instead, and possibly the world-wide distributed 3fuco7' racemosns Fres. , 

 which does not belong to the insect-destro3nng fungi at all, but to the 

 ordinary molds. Strangely enough the tubes of the so-called South 

 African locust fungus received by the writer, both while in Argentina 

 during 1898 and here in Nebraska two years later, contained fine 

 growths of what was evidently the above-named Mucor. 



In glancing over the files of the Journal of the Department of Agri- 

 culture of Western Australia for July, 1901, a statement was found 

 to the effect that "The destruction of locusts b}- means of a parasitic 

 fungus {Mucor ixtceinosus) has now passed from the domain of experi- 

 mentation into that of everj^day practice. The method which has been 

 tried in various places where swarms of locusts proved troublesome 

 to vegetation, notably South Africa, has been for the past two or three 

 years successfully applied in Victoria." 



